Three more Cook County communities are suing opioid makers and distributors in connection with the opioid epidemic. But unlike dozens of other Chicago-area towns that have already taken similar court action, the three towns are suing separately, rather than together, and have added medical societies as defendants.
The villages of Lyons, Summit and Bedford Park lodged suits last week in Cook County Circuit Court against the following drug companies and drug distributors: Purdue Pharma; Abbott Laboratories; Teva Pharmaceuticals; Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson; Janssen Pharmaceuticals; Endo Health Solutions; McKesson Corp.; Cardinal Health; and AmeriSourceBergen,
The villages also named as defendants Perry Fine and Lynn Webster, who both live in Utah, and Scott Fishman, of California, who are all doctors, as well as the American Academy of Pain Medicine and American Pain Society, both based in Chicago, and the American Geriatrics Society, based in New York.
Lyons, Summit and Bedford Park are all represented by the firm of Kralovec, Jambois & Schwartz, and the Khowaja Law Firm, both of Chicago.
The three villages alleged the drug makers, distributors, doctors and medical groups fed the opioid crisis by engaging in improper activities, including deceptive marketing and downplaying opioid risks. There has been an untold cost in human and dollar terms, the villages said. Specifically, the villages said they have spent funds on public programs and services in response to opioid abuse, which they would not have otherwise spent.
The villages called the academy and two societies “Front Group Defendants,” in that they allegedly received “significant financial support” from the drug manufacturers to help promote opioids as safe and effective.
“Because of their seeming objectivity and non-profit, public service missions, their promotional activity carried greater weight and buttressed Manufacturing Defendants’ own marketing,” the villages alleged.
The three doctor defendants helped spread the word, through official outlets, that prescription opioids were fine to use, the plaintiff municipalities alleged.
The drug makers and their associates especially targeted vulnerable groups, the elderly and veterans, in the campaign to push opioids, plaintiffs alleged.
Plaintiffs alleged the distributors failed to control distribution of prescription opioids, which led to an oversupply of opioids, “fueling an illegal secondary market.” Further, opioid pill mills “cannot operate effectively without the tacit support and blind eye of the Distributors,” the plaintiffs charged.
Distributors are a “key link in the chain” to ensure opioid prescriptions are on the up-and-up, plaintiffs added.
The suit alleged manufacturers conspired to break consumer and insurance fraud laws, while the alleged “front groups” defrauded consumers. The suit seeks damages from manufacturers, but not from the groups, only wanting the groups barred from promoting prescription opioids.
A host of similar suits from around the country have been consolidated in Cleveland federal court.
A pair of opioid suits, filed by two groups of mostly suburban communities, were filed this year in Cook County Circuit Court. Ari Scharg, a lawyer with Edelson P.C., which is representing these towns, said his firm wants to keep these suits in Cook County, where the firm would have more control.
Those two lawsuits did not name the pain and geriatric groups as defendants, instead adding local doctors as defendants to thwart an expected attempt by the drug makers to add those local lawsuits to the combined proceedings in Ohio.